


a cure for empty

by supersalamander



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C, F/F, Gen, Road Trip, Snakes, a few crimes, reptile world, vriska drives a pickup truck. i do not take constructive criticism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:53:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersalamander/pseuds/supersalamander
Summary: vriska and terezi go on a road trip. there's a few crimes and also they're gay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to my friend jamie for beta reading ily!!!

It was extremely early when Vriska woke you up to say that you needed to leave.  
In fact, you had only been asleep for an hour or two when she barged into your dark respiteblock at 2:47 am and loudly announced, “We need to get out of here.”  
You groan, wiping cold sopor out of your face. “What the fuck do you mean? Did you commit a crime and now you have to leave the country or something?” you ask through a somewhat-stifled yawn.  
“I’m tired of everything around here and I just need to get away, and you’re coming with me,” she informs you. “We’re leaving in half an hour. I’ll be waiting in the car.” She slams the door on her way out, rattling everything on your bright red walls.  
You drag yourself out of the recuperacoon to cram as many gaudily colored hawaiian shirts in a bag as you possibly can, along with various cargo shorts and all 7 of your pairs of crocs. After all, you should look your best for this impromptu road trip. On your way out the door, you throw on your old neon yellow windbreaker with the pink and green sleeves.  
The car is an old rusty blue pickup truck that makes noises that you’ve never heard another vehicle make, probably because you’ve never been in a car as shitty as this one. After heading down 4 flights of stairs and leaving the dingy building where you and Vriska rent a two bedroom apartment, you toss your stained hot pink suitcase in the truck bed and climb in the passenger seat, leaning the chair back as far as you can so that maybe you have a chance of falling asleep. It’s unlikely, though, seeing as Vriska is blasting Regina Spektor so loud that the dogs across the street are barking at the noise.  
“Glad you finally joined the party, ‘Rezi. I was afraid you were delaying getting us far the fuck away from here.” She revs the truck engine a couple of times, eliciting more disagreement from the dogs, and pulls out into the silent street. There are almost no cars around at this time of night, so you nearly forget that she’s a fucking terrible driver.  
You think you had almost fallen asleep when Vriska jerks the car to a stop outside a Casey’s to buy gas, because the tank was completely empty, in true Serket fashion. You sit up, sniffing the air to orient yourself, then slowly climb out of the car to get an icee.  
The store is painted a shade of orangey yellow that smells like days old nacho cheese. There’s absolutely no one inside but you and the cashier, a tired carapacian woman drumming her fingers on the counter with a clicking noise. You fill the biggest cup they have, which they’ve called “God Tier” to make it seem special and profit off of Earth C’s mythological figures, with blue raspberry and cherry slush swirled in an unnaturally bright spiral of fake fruit. You pay quickly, nearly dropping a handful of loose change on the dirty white tile floor in your haste.  
You’ve been on the highway for an hour, licking the window when Vriska’s not looking to see what’s outside in the greyish dawn, when you finally ask the question that’s on your mind. Not where you’re going, because you’re sure she doesn’t know either.  
“What are we running from?” is the question you had, and she takes a long moment to answer.  
“Nothing ever happens back home,” she finally states, turning the music down so you can hear her response. “It’s bland and I just felt stuck. We wake up, we go to meaningless jobs, we go home and do something else meaningless and then we sleep before another meaningless day. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was like nothing even mattered, not like before. I had to leave, and I just didn’t want to go alone.”  
It was a good enough answer. You looked back at her, peachy light from the beginning sunrise reflecting off her asymmetrical horns. She looks nice this way, you think, in a faded blue and red flannel and torn up jeans. She’s familiar, a reminder of what your life was like before the game. You feel a slight pang in your heart from thinking about the past.  
She’s right, you think. It’ll be nice to have a change from an empty daily routine. Just the two of you, out on the road searching for anything that really matters. Maybe it’ll be just like old times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the gas station is called casey's cause there's already a gas station called casey's and also that's a salamander in homestuck


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jamie thanks again for beta reading!!! ily!!!

You stop at another gas station a few hours later. There’s been no talking so far, mostly because you’ve been drifting in and out of sleep, but also because neither of you knows what to say. You’ve moved on from Regina Spektor to just flipping through local radio stations on a whim, but nothing can really fill the silence.  
Inside, you make a beeline for the bathroom, since you drank a huge icee earlier and all. When you come out, you catch Vriska stuffing a bag of corn nuts in her jacket pocket. The old you, whoever she was, would make a comment about that, call it “unjust” or something, but these days you’re feeling different. You decide to give it a try, snagging a pack of strawberry gum and tucking it into the waistband of your jeans. Hey, at least you’re falling out of the everyday routine. At least, that’s how you’re justifying it.  
Back in the truck, you stop the radio. “Vriska, do you have any clue where we’re going or what we’re going to do once we get there?”  
She thinks for a minute. “East,” she finally says. “We’re going east and when we get there we’re just going to do whatever they do out east. Maybe we’ll find a new life there, one that has a purpose. At least it won’t be back home.”  
“Did you even tell anyone we were going?” you ask.  
“No. If they ask we’ll tell them, if they don’t then they never cared to begin with. Good way to find out who really gives a shit,” she answered matter-of-factly.  
“Listen, if we fuck everything up back home it’s all on you.”  
“Isn’t it always?”  
You’re both silent after that. She turns the radio on again and, with a screech of the tires that makes your skull rattle, swings the truck back onto the highway faster than anyone really should. You wonder who the hell even gave her a driver’s license.  
A few miles later, there’s a big fading sign on the sign of the road for a place called “Reptile World.” You promptly inform Vriska that the two of you will be stopping there, and that she needs to pull off the highway at the next exit. Might as well see some neat snakes or something while you’re heading “east”.  
Reptile World is not much of a world. It’s really just a small building with dangerous reptiles in habitats that don’t quite seem sturdy enough. A green mamba presses itself against plexiglass, and you reach out a finger to meet it on the other side, smiling widely. Meanwhile, Vriska is preoccupied with a rosy tarantula. Who even goes to fucking Reptile World for a spider?  
As you head farther into the building, the reptiles get bigger. Vriska seems anxious near the alligator in what looks like a glorified bathtub. Her hand brushes yours.  
“I remember back home,” she starts, voice wavering, facing away from you, “There was a boy with an alligator lusus. He was nice, I guess, but that didn’t change anything. After he was dead, the lusus came after me. It was mad or something, because I killed its charge. I don’t know what happened to it. I hid in my hive and eventually it was gone.”  
Her facial expression changes quickly, completely masking the fact that she’d just opened up about something. “Let’s do something big,” she says quickly, jumping at the chance to change the subject. “We’re going to steal one of these snakes.” You know that once she has her mind set on something like this, there’s no changing it. Besides, you’ve been learning to unwind lately. Maybe this’ll be fun. You always wanted a snake.  
You used to be uptight about the rules, deciding people’s fates based on an old set of law books. But at some point, you realized that you just had to let things go. Sometimes, following the law leads to consequences. The laws are arbitrary now, anyway. You’re practically one of the gods on this rock.  
You are sitting in the passenger seat of the dirty old truck with a three and a half foot long ball python wriggling in your lap. It had been hard to smuggle it out of the place without anyone noticing. You’d ended up tucking it into your jacket, and you could feel it squirming as the ticket lady wished you a nice day.  
“I’m naming her Frito-Lay,” you announce, “and my mind absolutely fucking cannot be changed on this.”  
Frito-Lay wraps herself around your hand in agreement, slithering up your arm.  
Vriska nods. “I guess that’s a nice name for a snake. Hey, what’s she eat, anyway?”  
“Oh, probably large insects or small mice.”  
“Ew! I don’t want that in my car! Where the fuck are we going to get that, anyway?”  
“Pet stores exist, dummy, and anyway we only need to feed her once a week or so. It’ll be fine. Anyway, stealing her was your idea.”  
“I know.” Vriska reaches over and strokes Frito’s scaly head. “She’s gonna be alright. We all are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reptile world is based off a real place with the same name in missouri. i saw the bathtub alligator. its real


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it lads it gets gayer here

It’s about 9:30 pm, in a small town called Strider Falls (you rolled your eyes here at this act of recognition towards your friends, and took a picture with a mental note to show Dave later). You’ve checked into a motel for the night, after spending a very long time on the road. You’re sprawled across the beds, chatting about things you could do on your trip over lukewarm pizza you ordered two and a half hours ago. Vriska wrinkles her nose as you devour slice after slice of Hawaiian (she thinks pineapple does not belong on pizza, a crime for which you have decided to forgive her). Frito-Lay is curled up on a towel that you had microwaved, so that she has some source of heat. Sometimes you have to make do with very limited, very shitty resources.   
“I think, to get the most out of this, we should go south, on our way east. Maybe even wind our way up and down the country, see everything,” you say through a mouthful of cheese and canadian bacon. “If we’re doing this, we should do it right. Road trip to the max.”  
“Makes sense. Anyway, we’re in no hurry,” she replies, stretching her arms behind her, sprawling across the white sheets.  
“I mean, money is definitely a factor in what all we can do. Once we’re out, we’re out. No jobs and all, y’know,” you reason, licking parmesan crumbs and grease from your grey fingers.  
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I think we’ll have plenty. Enough to last us a long while.” There’s a wink here, obviously hinting at some secret Serket fortune.  
You wonder how the hell Vriska made an assload of money from working retail. After a minute, you decide she probably didn’t. What she does in her spare time is a fucking mystery to everyone, but as long as it means you’re not going to suddenly go broke in fucking Stexas, or whatever it’s called, then you guess you don’t really care what it is.  
Suddenly, Vriska sits up, and climbs onto your bed. “You ever wonder what it’d be like if we never made it out of Alternia? By now, we’d have been sent off planet. Maybe we’d never see anyone we knew ever again. I don’t think I could go the rest of my life alone,” she murmurs, sliding closer to you until you can feel how cool she is, until her arm brushes against yours, making you shudder slightly.   
“I don’t think either of us could have gone on like that much longer. That planet would destroy anything good about you, turn you into some perfect puppet of the Empress. It was brutal, for sure, but we didn’t have a choice. Bought into it, even,” you reply softly. “But that doesn’t matter now. We’re here, and we’re together. Team Scourge, round two.” You grab her hand gently, winding your chilly fingers into her icy ones, and laying your other hand on top.   
You can feel her staring into your crimson eyes, with a strangely sweet hint of something on her face - longing, maybe, a need for someone who you’re scared doesn’t need you (a feeling you can relate to). You smile back, not your usual all-teeth-all-for-show smile, but something softer, more gentle, to show her that it’s okay.   
Somehow, this moment is different than all the ones you’ve shared before. Even your pale relationship had never gotten this… intimate. This feels closer. Maybe it’s because you’re older now, or because you spent three years in the void searching for her. Maybe it’s the road trip, being away together and searching for something new, anything but the empty routine you’d fallen into back home. Maybe it’s -  
You are cut off abruptly by her kissing you, right on the lips. It’s gentle, but desperate, as if she’d been wanting this for a long time. Maybe you had been, too. You kiss her back, stronger, determined to make the most of this moment. She tastes like salt water and copper and cool ranch doritos, which you have just now decided is the world’s best taste. You run a hand through her hair, and she leans into you. This feels… right.   
You don’t know how long it lasts, but you think it’s a while. Vriska finally pulls away. “So,” she starts.  
“Is there a problem?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.   
“No! Of course not,” she nearly yelps, “I just. Didn’t think that was a thing we would do, that’s all.”  
“I mean, me neither, but I’m not complaining,” you say, laying back on the bed.   
“Yeah, I’m not, either.” She lays next to you, moving in close.   
You’re both silent for a while after that. She falls asleep quickly, completely fucking wiped from being awake all day, driving. As usual, it takes you longer to sleep, and you find yourself instead staring at nothing and thinking about where anything could even go from here. What are you to each other, even? Is this a thing now? Do you love her?   
Your last thought before losing consciousness is that you’re glad Vriska is there with you. It’s nice to have someone with you to navigate this messy, confusing world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nowhere is based off of real places i guess except i was picturing it taking place in some cumulative view of every mediocre motel i've ever been in cause they all look exactly the same


End file.
